Humanity: The Problem
It is clear that humans are to blame for the current extinction crisis. Both Stephen Meyer and E. O. Wilson place the calamity squarely on the shoulders of humanity. Wilson says that “human overpopulation” is a root cause of all the other factors in the loss of biological diversity: “habitat loss,” “invasive species,” “pollution,” and “overharvesting.” Meyer names these same forces in only slightly different terms: “development, agriculture, resource consumption, pollution, and alien species.” The forms of humanity’s impact are many, but the heart of the matter is simple: humans are everywhere. Although Wilson says that Homo sapiens “is a species confined to an extremely small [ecological] niche,” the truth is that humans have proven to be remarkable versatile, colonizing all but the most inhospitable areas of the globe. Most of this adaptability, as Wilson points out, is a matter of our mastery of technology, a function of our intelligence and ingenuity. At the beginning of The End of the Wild, Meyer describes “weedy species” as “adaptive generalists—species that flourish in a variety of ecological settings, switch easily between food types, and breed prolifically.” In the terms of this definition, humans are the consummate weedy species. Humanity’s resourcefulness and genius have allowed it to adapt to myriad habitats around the globe and to multiply to fill these spaces; however, humanity reaches even further than this. When humanity cannot adapt to local conditions, it assimilates the landscape to itself instead. Throughout the last 10,000 years, humans have dug up the land, selectively cultivated plants to being eaten by people, re-routed rivers, and moved mountains. Humankind has re-inscribed the face of the earth to such an extent that it is currently in danger of writing large swatches of the life on it out of existence. Do we care?
It is clear that humans are to blame for the current extinction crisis. Both Stephen Meyer and E. O. Wilson place the calamity squarely on the shoulders of humanity. Wilson says that “human overpopulation” is a root cause of all the other factors in the loss of biological diversity: “habitat loss,” “invasive species,” “pollution,” and “overharvesting.” Meyer names these same forces in only slightly different terms: “development, agriculture, resource consumption, pollution, and alien species.” The forms of humanity’s impact are many, but the heart of the matter is simple: humans are everywhere. Although Wilson says that Homo sapiens “is a species confined to an extremely small [ecological] niche,” the truth is that humans have proven to be remarkable versatile, colonizing all but the most inhospitable areas of the globe. Most of this adaptability, as Wilson points out, is a matter of our mastery of technology, a function of our intelligence and ingenuity. At the beginning of The End of the Wild, Meyer describes “weedy species” as “adaptive generalists—species that flourish in a variety of ecological settings, switch easily between food types, and breed prolifically.” In the terms of this definition, humans are the consummate weedy species. Humanity’s resourcefulness and genius have allowed it to adapt to myriad habitats around the globe and to multiply to fill these spaces; however, humanity reaches even further than this. When humanity cannot adapt to local conditions, it assimilates the landscape to itself instead. Throughout the last 10,000 years, humans have dug up the land, selectively cultivated plants to being eaten by people, re-routed rivers, and moved mountains. Humankind has re-inscribed the face of the earth to such an extent that it is currently in danger of writing large swatches of the life on it out of existence. Do we care?
Why Why We Care Is Not Enough
So it is established that humans, with our vast ingenuity and versatility, are the cause of the extinction crisis underway today. Many people are worried and are sounding the alarm for others to get concerned as well. However, the reasons a person has for caring about the loss of biological diversity will affect what s/he is willing to do about, what s/he sees as a reasonable solution (if there is one), and which causes of the problem s/he is willing to acknowledge and address. If the argument against the loss of biological diversity is not given the proper frame, the steps taken to address the problem cannot yield long-term solutions. Many of the arguments as to why we should care do not lead to genuine resolution.
So it is established that humans, with our vast ingenuity and versatility, are the cause of the extinction crisis underway today. Many people are worried and are sounding the alarm for others to get concerned as well. However, the reasons a person has for caring about the loss of biological diversity will affect what s/he is willing to do about, what s/he sees as a reasonable solution (if there is one), and which causes of the problem s/he is willing to acknowledge and address. If the argument against the loss of biological diversity is not given the proper frame, the steps taken to address the problem cannot yield long-term solutions. Many of the arguments as to why we should care do not lead to genuine resolution.
Why Economics Are Not Enough
Several arguments typically are promulgated regarding why one should care about the impoverishment of our natural environment. Primary among these is “loss of resources.” Both Meyer and Wilson reference this argument, which says that key natural resources on which humanity relies are in danger of disappearing. This phenomenon is easily visible in many industries; overconsumption leads to the end of that which is desired to be consumed.
However, when many people look at the natural world and see discrete natural resources that need to be protected in order to ensure their availability for use in the future, they are not concerned with fragile ecosystems or truly ecologically sustainable levels, but rather with the very maximum of a particular thing that can be extracted without destroying the ability to extract that thing in the future. This tends to prioritize one species or one linear food chain over other interactions within the ecosystem. Perhaps the argument can be stretched further. It is often argued that the cure for cancer may be awaiting discovery deep in the Amazon rainforest. The endangered forest could hold the key to new life-saving pharmaceuticals or medical or scientific breakthroughs that could benefit humanity. To view the loss of biological diversity in terms of economic cost puts the worth of each species or entity squarely within the realm of the market economy. This same market economy externalizes its costs into the natural environment and leads to a great deal of the loss of biological diversity.
Perhaps the lapse in market economics—or the ability of producers to externalize costs into the environment—could be corrected by recognizing we are destroying the ability of the earth to provide economically valuable “ecosystem services” that it now provides free of charge. This is another popular way of arguing for the importance of biological diversity. The loss of natural services, like soil and water renewal, air filtration and oxygen generation, and the pollination of plants, would cost billions of dollars to replace and are vital to our world economy. While it is frightening to contemplate a world that cannot nourish plants in the soil or produce fruit from its plants, this argument is also a dangerous way of framing the problem. By putting these “services” into economic terms, we run the risk of dangerously overestimating the abilities of technology. For instance, industrial agriculture relies heavily on chemical fertilizers, an ostensible technological fix that seemed to improve on nature by providing more soil fertility than nature itself. But we now know that synthetic fertilizers are not sufficient for creating viable soil apart from the biotic action of worms and other soil organisms. Additionally, chemical fertilizers contribute to environmental destruction in a number of ways, from relying on extractive industries to disrupting fluvial and oceanic habitats through runoff.
It is not enough to frame the problem of the loss of biological diversity in terms of economics. As Meyer points out, even the “exemplar of sustainable development: Brazil-nut harvesting in the Amazon” fell before the logic of the global market. If the economic system itself promotes unsustainable behavior, arguments for sustaining nature in order to maintain it do not make sense. Something larger must motivate real change.
However, when many people look at the natural world and see discrete natural resources that need to be protected in order to ensure their availability for use in the future, they are not concerned with fragile ecosystems or truly ecologically sustainable levels, but rather with the very maximum of a particular thing that can be extracted without destroying the ability to extract that thing in the future. This tends to prioritize one species or one linear food chain over other interactions within the ecosystem. Perhaps the argument can be stretched further. It is often argued that the cure for cancer may be awaiting discovery deep in the Amazon rainforest. The endangered forest could hold the key to new life-saving pharmaceuticals or medical or scientific breakthroughs that could benefit humanity. To view the loss of biological diversity in terms of economic cost puts the worth of each species or entity squarely within the realm of the market economy. This same market economy externalizes its costs into the natural environment and leads to a great deal of the loss of biological diversity.
Perhaps the lapse in market economics—or the ability of producers to externalize costs into the environment—could be corrected by recognizing we are destroying the ability of the earth to provide economically valuable “ecosystem services” that it now provides free of charge. This is another popular way of arguing for the importance of biological diversity. The loss of natural services, like soil and water renewal, air filtration and oxygen generation, and the pollination of plants, would cost billions of dollars to replace and are vital to our world economy. While it is frightening to contemplate a world that cannot nourish plants in the soil or produce fruit from its plants, this argument is also a dangerous way of framing the problem. By putting these “services” into economic terms, we run the risk of dangerously overestimating the abilities of technology. For instance, industrial agriculture relies heavily on chemical fertilizers, an ostensible technological fix that seemed to improve on nature by providing more soil fertility than nature itself. But we now know that synthetic fertilizers are not sufficient for creating viable soil apart from the biotic action of worms and other soil organisms. Additionally, chemical fertilizers contribute to environmental destruction in a number of ways, from relying on extractive industries to disrupting fluvial and oceanic habitats through runoff.
It is not enough to frame the problem of the loss of biological diversity in terms of economics. As Meyer points out, even the “exemplar of sustainable development: Brazil-nut harvesting in the Amazon” fell before the logic of the global market. If the economic system itself promotes unsustainable behavior, arguments for sustaining nature in order to maintain it do not make sense. Something larger must motivate real change.
Why Biophilia Is Not Enough
Meyer and Wilson argue that nature in general and certain animal species in particular hold psychological and spiritual importance to humanity. Our quality of life, the wonderfulness of our life experience would diminish without biological diversity. When I sat down to write about the loss of biological diversity, I gazed at my bulletin board as I gathered my thoughts. Fluffy penguins stared back from the cover of a World Wildlife calendar, along with a stately bald eagle, a grizzly bear, young Florida panther cubs, and a pair of grey wolves on postcards from the Sierra Club. These graceful animals tug at our heartstrings, maybe make us reach in our pocketbooks to help protect them from extinction. The recent report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) brings the plight of these charismatic mega-fauna into even sharper relief: 1 in 4 mammals are “at risk of disappearing forever.” Maybe it is important to our psyche or our spirit to know that we inhabit a world where there are charismatic animals like the panther or the bald eagle, but it is not enough. Our attachment to stately animals or green vistas has lead, as the authors point out, to piecemeal approaches to conservation. There is more to the report than the mammals; the IUCN “Red List” includes nearly 45,000 species of plants and animals, of which 38 percent are threatened with extinction. Our Biophilia may draw us to particular animals or vistas in specific, but it does not attach us in a psychological or spiritual way to ecosystems as a whole. Biophilia focuses our attention on the most obvious and the most human-like of animals and ignores their, and our own, context in the wider ecosystem.
Meyer and Wilson argue that nature in general and certain animal species in particular hold psychological and spiritual importance to humanity. Our quality of life, the wonderfulness of our life experience would diminish without biological diversity. When I sat down to write about the loss of biological diversity, I gazed at my bulletin board as I gathered my thoughts. Fluffy penguins stared back from the cover of a World Wildlife calendar, along with a stately bald eagle, a grizzly bear, young Florida panther cubs, and a pair of grey wolves on postcards from the Sierra Club. These graceful animals tug at our heartstrings, maybe make us reach in our pocketbooks to help protect them from extinction. The recent report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) brings the plight of these charismatic mega-fauna into even sharper relief: 1 in 4 mammals are “at risk of disappearing forever.” Maybe it is important to our psyche or our spirit to know that we inhabit a world where there are charismatic animals like the panther or the bald eagle, but it is not enough. Our attachment to stately animals or green vistas has lead, as the authors point out, to piecemeal approaches to conservation. There is more to the report than the mammals; the IUCN “Red List” includes nearly 45,000 species of plants and animals, of which 38 percent are threatened with extinction. Our Biophilia may draw us to particular animals or vistas in specific, but it does not attach us in a psychological or spiritual way to ecosystems as a whole. Biophilia focuses our attention on the most obvious and the most human-like of animals and ignores their, and our own, context in the wider ecosystem.
Why We Need A New Orientation
“Human pathogens and disease are likely to flourish in [a degraded] environment, easily skipping around the world,” says Meyer. “Civilizations collapse when their environments are ruined,” Wilson warns. Both of these are true and valid claims, but if we look deeper, they also point to the root cause of the loss of biological diversity.
In nature, disease spreads when a population becomes too large or too dense. It culls the population back to levels that can be sustained within the environment. When populations outstrip their food sources, some animals die of starvation until balance is restored. Because humans are so good at manipulating environments and other organisms to serve their needs, they seem to live outside these biological constraints. In reality, we are living on borrowed time, at the expense of the environment that ultimately sustains us.
This is not an argument for “allowing nature to take its course” on individuals or populations—I am not endorsing genocide by neglect. However, recognizing that the human drive to defeat the natural limitations and checks of our environments will go a long way toward a new orientation toward nature. Of course we want the people alive today to continue to be so, and to live relatively free of threats from the natural environment. But this admittedly anthropocentric goal will require a reframing, a reflection on the fact that we are not above and beyond nature, but part of a delicate and intricate system, dependent as well as determinant.
Humankind clearly is unique—no other species has such disproportional representation across the earth or power over the landscape. This fact has lead to an attitude that humans somehow are separate from, better than, and have no need of nature. Yet the many accomplishments that humans have been able to achieve through ingenuity have not divorced us from a dependence on nature. The question cannot be: our well-being versus that of the planet, for the two are inextricable. This is precisely what Meyer argues when he says, “We as a global society must develop an ecological identity that underscores the connection between how we live and what happens around us… What remains is for us to wake up and see the moral linkages—the realities of shared existence and shared fate.” The question of why to care must be answered at this fundamental level, with a holistic focus that recognizes humanity as a keystone but not the only thing of importance.
“Human pathogens and disease are likely to flourish in [a degraded] environment, easily skipping around the world,” says Meyer. “Civilizations collapse when their environments are ruined,” Wilson warns. Both of these are true and valid claims, but if we look deeper, they also point to the root cause of the loss of biological diversity.
In nature, disease spreads when a population becomes too large or too dense. It culls the population back to levels that can be sustained within the environment. When populations outstrip their food sources, some animals die of starvation until balance is restored. Because humans are so good at manipulating environments and other organisms to serve their needs, they seem to live outside these biological constraints. In reality, we are living on borrowed time, at the expense of the environment that ultimately sustains us.
This is not an argument for “allowing nature to take its course” on individuals or populations—I am not endorsing genocide by neglect. However, recognizing that the human drive to defeat the natural limitations and checks of our environments will go a long way toward a new orientation toward nature. Of course we want the people alive today to continue to be so, and to live relatively free of threats from the natural environment. But this admittedly anthropocentric goal will require a reframing, a reflection on the fact that we are not above and beyond nature, but part of a delicate and intricate system, dependent as well as determinant.
Humankind clearly is unique—no other species has such disproportional representation across the earth or power over the landscape. This fact has lead to an attitude that humans somehow are separate from, better than, and have no need of nature. Yet the many accomplishments that humans have been able to achieve through ingenuity have not divorced us from a dependence on nature. The question cannot be: our well-being versus that of the planet, for the two are inextricable. This is precisely what Meyer argues when he says, “We as a global society must develop an ecological identity that underscores the connection between how we live and what happens around us… What remains is for us to wake up and see the moral linkages—the realities of shared existence and shared fate.” The question of why to care must be answered at this fundamental level, with a holistic focus that recognizes humanity as a keystone but not the only thing of importance.
Humanity: The Solution
Civilization must make itself compatible with the natural world, not see itself as above it, if both the people and the diversity of life in the natural world are to survive. The moral reframing needed will not appear spontaneously. It is critical that we educate our children about the interconnectedness of life. It is important that we teach our children that nature is more than an amalgam of resources for our use and enjoyment. Living and intact ecosystems support us and all the other life forms connected in our web.
I am not so pessimistic as Meyer. I do not think a reorientation in our values will take “many centuries.” I think that if we make this type of education a priority, we will see the turnaround much faster. As Wilson says, “The ascent to nature begins in childhood, and the science of biology is therefore ideally introduced in the earliest years.” Ecological stewards are grown.
The ecological stewards of tomorrow can use what we have accomplished thus far as stepping-stones to a preserve and renew as much biodiversity as possible. Even though the protections that are in place today address the problem in a piecemeal fashion, laws like the Endangered Species Act, international agreements like the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES), controls on the transportation of alien species, and wildlife preserves and refuges are invaluable to conserving biodiversity. The ecological stewards of today and the children who are trained in this value system tomorrow will work to strengthen these measures and find new ways to protect ecosystems, counteract the impact of the world economy, and save even the least charismatic of species.
The new ecologists, having grown up with a holistic view of nature, may willingly make choices that are based not on what is cheap or expedient, but on what is best for humanity and the world as a whole. While I do not know what form these solutions will take, I believe that it is not too late to stem the tide of the loss of biological diversity. A reorientation away from a strictly anthropocentric view of humanity’s place in nature and toward a holistic approach to nature and ourselves is possible. It begins with the education of children.
Civilization must make itself compatible with the natural world, not see itself as above it, if both the people and the diversity of life in the natural world are to survive. The moral reframing needed will not appear spontaneously. It is critical that we educate our children about the interconnectedness of life. It is important that we teach our children that nature is more than an amalgam of resources for our use and enjoyment. Living and intact ecosystems support us and all the other life forms connected in our web.
I am not so pessimistic as Meyer. I do not think a reorientation in our values will take “many centuries.” I think that if we make this type of education a priority, we will see the turnaround much faster. As Wilson says, “The ascent to nature begins in childhood, and the science of biology is therefore ideally introduced in the earliest years.” Ecological stewards are grown.
The ecological stewards of tomorrow can use what we have accomplished thus far as stepping-stones to a preserve and renew as much biodiversity as possible. Even though the protections that are in place today address the problem in a piecemeal fashion, laws like the Endangered Species Act, international agreements like the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES), controls on the transportation of alien species, and wildlife preserves and refuges are invaluable to conserving biodiversity. The ecological stewards of today and the children who are trained in this value system tomorrow will work to strengthen these measures and find new ways to protect ecosystems, counteract the impact of the world economy, and save even the least charismatic of species.
The new ecologists, having grown up with a holistic view of nature, may willingly make choices that are based not on what is cheap or expedient, but on what is best for humanity and the world as a whole. While I do not know what form these solutions will take, I believe that it is not too late to stem the tide of the loss of biological diversity. A reorientation away from a strictly anthropocentric view of humanity’s place in nature and toward a holistic approach to nature and ourselves is possible. It begins with the education of children.
“IUCN Red List Reveals World’s Mammals in Crisis.” International Union for Conservation of Nature. 6 October 2008. http://www.iucn.org/what/species/mammals/index.cfm?uNewsID=1695
Meyer, Stephen M. The End of the Wild. Somerville, Mass.: Botson Review, 2006.
Wilson, E.O. Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.
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